Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley has published sixteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent book is the memoir-in-essays How to Change History: A Salvage Project (Nebraska, 2025). Other books include the autofiction, Oblivion, An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021), and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020; Penguin SE Asia, 2021). He has previously published four collections of short stories, and his stories have been widely anthologized. His widely used writing text, Turning Life into Fiction, has sold over a hundred thousand copies. His work has been published and translated widely, and he has received such awards as a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, and The Independent Press Book Award for Memoir, among others. His short stories have been featured several times on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and his essays and short stories have appeared in such journals as Creative Nonfiction, Conjunctions, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many others. He is the Founder of the international nonfiction conference NonfictioNOW and was the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa for nine years; inaugural director of The Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS, Singapore; and is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is co-editor with Leila Philip of Speculative Nonfiction (Specualtivenonfiction.org). He has delivered readings, workshops, and lectures around the world and is a Professor Emeritus at The University of Iowa. The Digital Storytelling Lab at The University of Iowa was recently dedicated in his honor. Visit his website at Robinhemley.com or subscribe to his Substack at Robinhemley.substack.com.

Events

Just Kill Me Now: Writing Humor

Sunday, July 20 - Friday, July 25, 2025

Robin Hemley

Is being funny something that can be taught? Probably not. In fact, the idea of this course is foolhardy and might take several years off the instructor’s life. Here’s why: What people find funny is not universal. What’s considered funny changes across cultures, age groups, eras, and individuals. What’s tragic is much easier to agree upon, including the tragedy of people trying and failing to be funny. People who laugh at their own jokes won’t be barred from this course, but they will be administered horse sedatives. In truth, you don’t have to have any experience making others laugh, as long as you’re not humorless. It should be stressed that this is not a course for people who want to tell jokes. The instructor does not want to hear jokes and will regard jokesters with suspicion and fear. If you want to understand something about what makes a situation funny and why—in fiction, nonfiction, and yes, poetry, then this is the course for you. We will read and discuss humor across the ages, good and bad, in different forms and we will try our hands (limit: two) at being funny through daily exercises dealing with embarrassing memories, moments that went terribly wrong, and other means of making an audience laugh both at and with you. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts.

Writing a Book Proposal for Agents, Editors, or Yourself

Sunday, July 13 - Friday, July 18, 2025

Robin Hemley

Let’s say you have a book idea, a book in progress, or a bunch of fragments that you hope will someday come together as a book. Let’s say that you’re unable to see exactly how everything should fit together or what the glue of the narrative is. Perhaps you’ve kicked around an idea for years but haven’t really committed to it, or possibly you’ve written the book already or are halfway through and have stopped. If this sounds like you, then you might consider writing a book proposal, whether you intend to submit this proposal to a publisher or not. Book proposals don’t have to be submitted to a publisher, but they can be an opportunity for you to understand your book more clearly and help you finish it. In this weeklong workshop, we will go through the process of writing proposals to potential publishers (or to yourself). While submitting a book proposal makes the most sense for writers of nonfiction or memoir, as it’s rare for a book of fiction to sell on one, anyone who wants to get a better handle on a longer project, regardless of genre, will benefit from this workshop. Even finished books need proposals sometimes to whet the appetites of agents and editors. We’ll learn about sample chapters, comparing your book to others, identifying your audience, and the chapter-by-chapter outline. Come to the class with one idea or several, or an outline (no more than 500 words) of your book in progress, or simply your frustration that the book you started years ago still isn’t done. While we can’t promise a cure-all, the book proposal might be a helpful tool for you. The class will largely be generative and will include daily exercises. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.